Why is FirefoxOS in Google Analytics?

You probably check your Google Analytics regularly to keep an eye on what’s happening. If your web strategy includes mobile, and it should of course, Google Analytics helps you make informed decisions about your web site’s visitors but, when it comes to mobiles, something has been a bit off lately….

As web consultancy, it’s our job to keep an eye on these things for our clients and we were a little surprised when we noticed a small number of visitors suddenly using FirefoxOS. The numbers were small, but higher than some other mobile operating systems, which is what stood out as unusual.

Now, let’s be fair here: Google prepared for the new launch of FirefoxOS in advance by associating the new user-agent with a specific OS and organisation. It did this to be ready and, usually, that’s a good thing but there seems to be a bug in how it is interpreting FirefoxOS.